PEN15 - Broad City meets Eighth Grade

This show is hilarious. Anyone else watching??

Co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play 13 year-old best friends circa the early 2000’s as they deal with middle school drama and adolescent self discovery. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is made up of age-appropriate kid actors which lets them do some more adult-level storytelling. Episode 3 is a highlight when Maya discovers masturbation and so is episode 7 where they log into AOL and try out instant messaging and chat rooms.

I can’t find any videos of scenes on youtube so you’ll have to settle for this trailer to get an idea of the show. But maybe don’t watch it if you hate marketing as much as I do. I just went in blind and really enjoyed it.

I watched the first 3 eps and really enjoyed them. Haven’t gotten back to watch the rest yet, but I definitely plan to.

I love how Erskine and Konkle absolutely fit in with the pre-adolescent cast. After about 2 minutes, you stop even noticing that these are grown women making sex references with 13-year-olds.

I’m way late in posting this, but check out the company PEN15 is keeping on this list of Emmy nominees for comedy writing…

“ronny/lilly,” Barry
Written by Alec Berg and Bill Hader

“Episode 1,” Fleabag
Written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

“Janet,” The Good Place
Written by Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan

“Anna Ishii-Peters,” PEN15
Written by Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle

“Nothing In This World Is Easy,” Russian Doll
Written by Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler

“A Warm Body,” Russian Doll
Written by Allison Silverman

“Veep,” Veep
Written by David Mandel

Now stop snoozing on this gem and watch it! It’s so, so good.

Pretty much every Hulu show gets slept on, so it’s nice to see this one at least get an Emmy nod. I’m also a fan. You get over the whole two-thirty-year-olds-playing-middle-schoolers-around-actual middle-school-actors thing quick. It just adds to the charm.

Really, Hulu has lots of quality original content aside from Handmaid’s Tale, especially if you like half-hour comedies. Ramy takes a few episodes to find itself, but quickly becomes great. Future Man’s kinda dumb, but also way funnier than I was expecting. The Bisexual (a Channel 4 import I think) is fantastic despite its sensationalistic title. I’d probably take the lot of them over Netflix’s stuff these days. (Although, yeah, Russian Doll is great.)

We finally started watching Season 2 last night. I’d been putting it off mainly because I was disappointed that it’s only 7 episodes long, having been cut short by our little pandemic. It’s still hilarious!

S02E01 does some fine work recreating the famous Boogie Nights pool party but with middle schoolers and I had to share. I couldn’t find the whole clip, but this is a good chunk of it.

This is such a great show. Don’t snooze on it any longer, Qt3!